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It's Cadet Kathryn Janeway's last chance to prove her fitness as a future Starfleet officer: a field study on a wilderness planet involving alien animals and their handlers. Captain Holbrook's menagerie of snarling, exotic beasts doesn't bother her. Their unruly alien handlers do. With an arrogant Klingon, an aggressive Talarian and an insecure Betazoid on the team, the war has begun even before they're beamed down to Diehr IV. How can I prove myself when I'm saddled with this bunch? Kathryn wonders. It seems like an impossible mission as she desperately tries to get everyone to cooperate....

Time is running out as Kathryn leads her mission through treacherous territory to the exit point -- only to discover that they are marooned on the alien planet! Now they must pull together -- or perish!

Janeway takes part in a training simulation involving a contaminant leak aboard a starship, which results in the death of the entire simulated crew. Afterwards, she is informed the simulation deals with the Chance Factor, the ability to plan for all possible problems, and is left wondering whether to remain at the academy.

Janeway is recruited by CaptainHolbrook after stopping a runaway saurian for a team aiming to prove Holbrook's belief that animals could be used by Starfleet in situations where technology fails. The rest of the team are an eclectic bunch: volatile Klingon youth Thorn, mistrusting TalarianEndar, Vulcan girl T'Lor and the young BetazoidJon Brazir. Their mission is to retrieve a probe on a planet's surface and take it back to the transporter site.

There are several personality clashes during the mission until the group are attacked by a local wild cat. They are saved by Thorn's targJub, who knocks himself and the cat off a cliff. The experience bonds the survivors and they and their animals work together to survive various other wildlife encounters.

The group narrowly make it back to the beamdown site on time and are retrieved by the USS McMurray. Holbrook reveals they beamed Jub aboard when he fell (and beamed the cat to another part of the planet) and he has been granted the funding to continue his research, while Janeway remains determined to remain in Starfleet.

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